Mohammed Rayeesuddin worked in a jewellery shop in Secunderabad. Only three months ago, he had lost his job with Mohammed Khan Jewelers because the owners did not want someone who was picked by the police working for them.
The police had picked him from the shop on the night of May 30. They said they wanted to question him in connection with the Mecca Masjid blasts blasts of May 18.
He was questioned and let off six times by the time the August 25 blasts occurred.
On August 31, around 9.30 pm, two policemen picked him in Secunderabad when he was returning home from work, his brother Mohammed Jameeluddin, inset above, says.
"I immediately sent a telegram to the police commissioner and the chief justice of the high court. The next day, we filed a petition in the high court. The police eventually produced him in the court on September 7. They said they arrested him on September 6."
When he met Rayeesuddin, 25, in jail the next day, Jameeluddin says his brother narrated how the police had tortured him.
"Rayees said the police were beating him, saying, 'How did your brother have the guts to send telegrams to the authorities and also file a petition in court. We will detain him also' Rayees said they were giving him electric shock in the genitals."
The police also told his brother to become an informer and offered him lots of money, claims Jameeluddin.
"They told him the Rs 8,000 he earned was peanuts and that they would take good care of him if he became an informer."
In addition to costing him two jobs, the detentions have also stopped Rayeesuddin's wedding. "He was supposed to have been married in June. After the police detained him the first time, the girl's side backed off," his mother Zaheeda Begum, centre, says.
"The police action broke my son. He restricted himself to work. In the past few months, he hasn't gone anywhere at all. He would go to office on time and come back at the same time every day. There was no complaint against him at work. When I told him we will look for another girl, he flatly refused. 'Abhi mat dekho (don't look now),' he said. He wanted to put all this behind and start afresh."
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